Comments on Rational Relational: A Free Text Editor for Very Large / Huge Files on ...

It isn't free (~$19.50), but I've used
2009-12-14T23:54:11.306+02:00
It isn't free (~$19.50), but I've used j-write to effortlessly open and edit files that were 7+GB in size.

Another (open source) editor you might want to throw a very large file at is metapad.

On the other hand, this means using vi/vim, which ...

2009-08-19T17:03:37.571+03:00

On the other hand, this means using vi/vim, which in my book is marginally preferable to clawing your own eyes out. But what really amazes me is that the GNU head tool has no "skip n lines first" feature.

@water outbreaks I agree it's not ideal (mostl...

2009-08-14T23:33:40.057+03:00

@water outbreaks
I agree it's not ideal (mostly since it rewrites the file), but it's the best available for Windows. Of course I would use "less" or "cat" if it was Linux...
I have a friend that says "Windows is for little girls", maybe he's right this time :)

What's that editor? Is it downloadable someplace?

No Vim isn't good enough for this kind of work...

2009-08-14T18:08:31.296+03:00

No Vim isn't good enough for this kind of work either. Maybe better than some, but still not ideal.

If you just want to view the file ( often the case when its a large text file) just cat the file into less.

Find the spot you want to edit, and write a quick script to make the edit.

Or better yet, you could write a striped down editor that is specifically tailored to this problem, like I did :)

@swanhart: Well, back then, they built things to l...

2009-08-13T13:16:14.078+03:00

@swanhart: Well, back then, they built things to last :P

@Karlsson: Scintilla is a great editor, but not meant for such work. I would assume it's because of the syntax parsing it does, etc.
Other editors like SQLyog are using their built-in editors, btw. SQLyog manages to open large files, but doesn't do that as gracefully as Vim though.

My MyQuery tool is currently using SCintilla. And ...

2009-08-13T01:56:06.272+03:00

My MyQuery tool is currently using SCintilla. And I agree that what you say is an issue, and something that I wanted to adress in MyQuery. The Scintilla base to an extent limites what MyQuery can do, bt still, I do my own interpretation of scripts, so I have a few things I want to do eventually, beyond editing large files in Scintilla.
One idea I have is to be able to run a script, statement by statement, bringing up each statement in Scintilla. Another is running statement by statement til we have an error, allow you to fix that that single statment using the Scintilla based editor, and then continue from there.

Just one more reason why vi (and vim in specific) ...

2009-08-12T23:41:55.487+03:00

Just one more reason why vi (and vim in specific) is still my favorite editor of all time. I spend at least a few hours per day in vim and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

I do like notepad++ for quick editing on windows and for short files and scripts though. I always have two or three notepad++ open for jotting down notes, and for using as a temporary clipboard repository.